2i8 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



departments of human knowledge will be of the same inviolable 

 necessity, but they will be almost 1 all abstract and hypothetical. 

 If we make provision for all possible conditions, including the 

 Divine Will, and also human free-will, for physical and moral 

 facts, then our universal judgments in these departments will be 

 as necessarily true as our metaphysical judgments. The pro 

 positions, &quot; If the natural causes of the planetary movements con 

 tinue to exist and to act as heretofore, uninterfered with by a higher 

 Power, the sun will rise to-morrow,&quot; and &quot; If the inhabitants of 

 the town A are exactly of the same mind and character as those 

 of the town B, they will make an equally gallant defence when 

 attacked &quot; are as necessarily true as &quot; If a triangle be inscribed in 

 a semicircle, it will be right-angled &quot;. 2 All three alike are em 

 bodiments of the principle of identity in this way : &quot; If a given 

 cause or reason be sufficient to produce or account for a given 

 fact or truth, it will produce or account for this absolutely, con 

 tinually, universally&quot;. And in so far as they embody this 

 principle they share in its absolute necessity. 



But, then, they are only hypothetical as regards the verification 

 of their antecedents (223), and in the first two judgments this 

 verification involves more than it is given to man to fathom in 

 regard to any future cases of them : for they deal, not with ab 

 stract, possible objects of thought, but with concrete, actual things 

 and events. Our assurance about the categorical proposition 

 that &quot; The sun will rise to-morrow &quot; is not absolute or necessary, 

 but contingent on our certitude that the causes of the planetary 

 motions will continue to exist and to act unimpeded as in the 

 past ; and since all this is dependent on the free will of the 

 Creator, our certitude about it cannot be absolute. 3 In the second 

 case, similarly, our ignorance as to any future fulfilment of the 

 antecedent is increased by the intervention of the free will of man. 

 Hence it is that our knowledge of the continued occurrence or 

 recurrence of concrete, existing phenomena, whether physical or 

 moral, is hypothetical and contingent: the permanence of the 

 grounds on which they are based is hidden from us. I am not 

 compelled, therefore, to assent to the categorical proposition that 

 &quot; The sun will rise to-morrow &quot;. To have cogent evidence either 

 for or against it would imply on my part a certain knowledge of 

 the Divine Will. From which it follows that man can never 



&amp;gt; Cf. p. 215, n. i. a Cf. JOSEPH, op. cit. t pp. 507-8. 



3 Cf. JOYCE, Logic, p. 237. 



